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Broadway legend Patti LuPone working on memoirs…

The chapter on her being cruelly passed over for the Broadway production of “Sunset Boulevard” after originating the role in London will be worth the price of the book alone! Glenn Close, who starred in the LA production, got the Broadway gig and Patti LuPone – who was contracted to do it in New York – was said to have been devastated – and completely furious. I think things from her dressing room were thrown out a window. She got back on her feet though, like any true diva, and used to $1 million-plus settlement from Andrew Lloyd Webber to build a swimming pool I seem to recall.

Patti, fresh off winning her second Tony Award Sunday for “Gypsy” (her first was for “Evita”), is working on a memoir, tentatively scheduled to be released in 2010 by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House Inc. The book is currently untitled. I’ve got some ideas: “Don’t Cry for Patti LuPone” or “Patti’s Turn” or how ’bout “Life Went On.”

The AP reports that according to the publisher, the actress will write about her whole life, “From her beginnings in Northport, Long Island, where she discovered that being onstage was the one place she couldn’t get into trouble, she takes us on the roller-coaster of professional highs … and emotional lows (her humiliating firing from ‘Sunset Boulevard,’ nightclub work in the Catskills to pay the bills).”

Patti;s other stage credits include the original London company of “Les Miserables” and Broadway revivals of “Sweeney Todd” and “Anything Goes.” She has also appeared in such films as “Witness,” “Driving Miss Daisy” and “Summer of Sam,” as well as four seasons as Libby on the ABC series “Life Goes On.”

Here is Patti’s bring down the house performance pf “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” on Sunday night’s Tony Awards. Gives you a good indication of why she won!